Contemporary writers

[TheFifthElement]

I love discovering new, talented writers. Writers who are writing right now. Writers who reflect our times, whether deliberately or unintentionally. So I thought it would be worthwhile having a thread in which we can share those contemporary writers we've discovered who have something to say and say it in an interesting or worthwhile way. I have many, so will try and ration myself out, but would love to hear about yours. Doesn't have to be writers writing in English, as I'd love to hear about writers from all over the world that I can watch out for in translation at, hopefully, a not too distant, far point in the future. Not restricted to novelists, as I'd love to hear about great contemporary poets too. Only qualification is that they must be writing right now!

Share your favourites here. Here are some of mine:

David Mitchell - had to come first. He's just great. I recommend...well, everything he's written but if you're going to start with one it might as well be Cloud Atlas. Mitchell is a lover of language and a weaver of tales. He loves to leave a little thread of crumbs for the reader to follow. Sometimes you get a little lost, he's not perfect, but on the whole he's pretty darned good. Can't recommend him enough.

Tom McCarthy - Booker longlisted with his current work 'C' which is also in the poll for the October book club, if anyones interested in reading something bang up to date. His debut novel Remainder is the only one of his works I've read so far and it's brilliant. Polarising, I think, but brilliant. It's very detailed, slightly odd and his characters are strangely two dimensional but yet it's right that they are. It's one of those novels that stays with you (well with me anyway) for days afterwards. It takes you somewhere you don't expect. McCarthy is also a founder member of the International Necronauts Society (http://necronauts.org/) which is a strange and rather interesting outfit.

Simon Armitage - poet. Brillant. Funny. Nice guy. The Shout (http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=88)

Jon Mcgregor because if nobody speaks of remarkable things is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.

and I can't finish without a little mention of Steven Hall, writer of the innovative and funny and sweet The Raw Shark Texts. Apart from it being a really good read, after I'd read it I realised/discovered that Steven Hall was an old classmate of mine. Slightly green (okay, maybe a livid green) at the fact that he has achieved my dream and/or gobbled all the talent I wished I had, but very happy for him and impressed with his book.

Yikes, that list is sadly lacking in women. Redress the balance, someone!

[David Lurie]

Interesting post! I guess I will read McCarthy as soon as the book will go to paperback.
David Mitchell is great but in my opinion Cloud Atlas is much better than the rest of his production - but I have not read his new book yet - Number 9 dream is very good but Black swan green was a disappointment.

Then I'd like to mention Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, a masterpiece but I think this this thread would be more meaningful avoiding well known writers, I love Zadie Smith's White teeth but everybody knows her so: what about Richard Wiley? this guy sells so poorly I doubt he will manage to find a publisher for his next novel - his last work was shelved for seven years before finding one - nonetheless he writes beautiful, deep and meaningful novels, Wiley's Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is one of the best books I have read in the last ten years.
Laurent Mauvignier is a powerful writer, if you can't read French then hope someone will publish Des Hommes in English, a breathtaking novel about the war in Algerie and the consequences of the colonial past of France.
Atmospheric disturbances by Rivka Galchen - Marisha Pessl got all the hype that year but Galchen was the real deal, can't wait for her sophomore effort.
Fans of Gary Shteyngart around here? Absurdistan is a funny and terrifying novel - it's funny because GS is a great comic writer - maybe in the league of Salman Rushdie - then it's terrifying because ... absurdistan it's the world we're livin' in.

[TheFifthElement]

Update: Tom McCarthy's 'C' has made the Booker shortlist. Sadly Mitchell did not. Seems he is, as ever, overlooked. Shame.

David - I agree with your view on Mitchell's Black Swan Green, I was disappointed too but perhaps only because it seems plain fayre compared to everything else. I have a fondness for Ghostwritten as it was the first of his works that I read, and for Number9Dream because of both its setting (Japan), its cleverness and the section in which 'Goatwriter' appears which is bizarre and yet very compelling. His latest offering The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is also very good. More of a standard narrative, but very nicely done. My only real criticism is that it ended too suddenly (I didn't want it to end!).

Richard Wiley sounds interesting, and Gary Shteyngart. I'll have to check those out. Thanks :D

[Rores28]

David Foster Wallace - his stuff is incredibly inventive, its entertaining and difficult but you don't necessarily need to "Get" it all in order to enjoy it. The short story "The Depressed Person" reminds me of a modern day "Notes from Underground." His stuff is filled with solipsistic anxieties, rationalizing on top of rationalizing, lots of literary "tricks" etc...

Also Cloud Atlas is being made into a movie

[TheFifthElement]

David Foster Wallace - his stuff is incredibly inventive, its entertaining and difficult but you don't necessarily need to "Get" it all in order to enjoy it. The short story "The Depressed Person" reminds me of a modern day "Notes from Underground." His stuff is filled with solipsistic anxieties, rationalizing on top of rationalizing, lots of literary "tricks" etc...


Isn't David Foster Wallace dead? I didn't like Broom of the System, the whole book felt like an in-joke I'd missed.

[breathtest]

I've recently discovered the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, although he his heavily influenced by Western culture, so it is very much like reading a western writer. I would compare his writing style to Raymond Carver. His books are also very funny in places, and have surreal elements that are meaningful and very interesting. His short stories are hit and miss, but one of his novels 'A Wild Sheep Chase' (the only novel of his i have read) was good. Witty and grave at the same time.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

Isn't David Foster Wallace dead? I didn't like Broom of the System, the whole book felt like an in-joke I'd missed.

He is dead, but there's probably not even grass on the plot.

Can you elaborate on Broom of the System? It's hard to find people who want to talk about that book. It's a favorite of mine, but I seem to be in the minority on that one. Also, if you haven't checked out any of his other stuff you should know that BOTS was his first and was written when he was still in grad school so his later stuff should be more tuned.

[the facade]

Great and helpful post. I personally feel like I am too caught up with classics and should try to integrate some contemporary literature into my reading list.
Aravid Adiga's White Tiger is highly recommended for entertainment value but sometimes too simplistic.

[Wilde woman]

Simon Armitage - poet. Brillant. Funny. Nice guy. The Shout (http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=88)

Glad to see this guy mentioned. I've only ever known him as a translator of ancient and early modern texts (esp. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the dramatized Odyssey). Listening to his recitation at your link was quite a shock. Can you recommend some of his original poetry?

[stlukesguild]

Honestly, I read far more contemporary poetry than contemporary novels. Among those I would highly recommend:

Anne Carson- Plainwater; The Autobiography of Red- Carson is a Canadian Scholar of classical Greece. She has made several intriguing translations including Aeschylus, Sappho, Euripides, etc... She is also one of the most daring and innovative of poets. Her "poetry" blurs the boundaries between translation, essay, narrative fiction, song, travelogue, etc...

Richard Wilbur- New and Collected Poems- While many in America were embracing the gushing emotionalism of the Confessional poets and the Beats, Wilbur was a master formalist... a craftsman polishing perfect poetic gems that ultimately may prove to have far more merit. Wilbur undoubtedly honed his craft through the practice of translation. He is one of the greatest translators from French... unrivaled for his Moliere.

Richard Howard- Inner Voices (selected poems)- Like Wilbur, Howard honed his skills as a poet through his efforts in translation (also from French). Andre Breton's Nadja, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Emil Cioran, Michel Foucault, André Gide, Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal, and an unrivaled Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire are among his major efforts in translation. His own poetry commonly takes the form of imaginary letters or dramatic monologues... not unlike the works of Browning. There are often elements of eroticism... the darkly comic... and the ironic.The characters of his poems survey the whole of the cultural history of Europe including Virginia Woolf, Rodin, Madame Curie, Robert Browning, Gautier, Henry James, Auden, Baudelaire, Nadar, Fra Angelico, Wagner, Rossini, etc...

Geoffrey Hill- New and Collected Poems, The Triumph of Love

Hill is a difficult, knotty poet that challenges the reader cognitively in a manner that rivals T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Dickinson, and Milton. A formalist whose English falls heavy... like molten lead... as he confronts the moral and ethical issues of our time.

Yves Bonnefoy- Curved Planks- Generally acknowledged as the leading French poet of our time. His poetry begins in the tradition of French Symbolism and Surrealism... often employing a grand sensuality of language... and yet a crystalline simplicity and structure. His themes often center upon the philosophical and his emphasis on the omnipresence of death in everyday life has led many commentators to consider him as the first true existential poet.

Homero Aridjis- Eyes to See Otherwise- Perhaps the leading Mexican poet. Kenneth Rexroth called Aridjis a "visionary poet of lyrical bliss, crystalline concentrations and infinite spaces". His poetry clearly builds upon the latin-American tradition of Surrealism and Magic Realism.

There might be a number of other poets I could give equal recommendation to:

Eugenio de Andrade, Anthony Hecht, Charles Wright, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Charles Simic, P.K. Page, Wisława Szymborska, Adam Zagajewski, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Yuhuda Amichai, etc...

[MadcapLaugher]

Victor Pelevin - A Russian author who wrote a re-telling of the Minotaur myth in the 21st century. An English translation should be pretty easy to find.

And I have to second the recommendation of David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest is an astounding work, that if read a certain way, can been seen as a warning to the current generation.

[TheFifthElement]

Glad to see this guy mentioned. I've only ever known him as a translator of ancient and early modern texts (esp. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the dramatized Odyssey). Listening to his recitation at your link was quite a shock. Can you recommend some of his original poetry?

Why the shock?

I'd recommend his collections Kid, Book of Matches or Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corderoy Kid. Kid is a good place to start as, I think, it was his first collection.


Can you elaborate on Broom of the System? It's hard to find people who want to talk about that book. It's a favorite of mine, but I seem to be in the minority on that one. Also, if you haven't checked out any of his other stuff you should know that BOTS was his first and was written when he was still in grad school so his later stuff should be more tuned.
Hmm. There were elements about BOTS that I found funny, but in the main I just got the impression that he was trying to be too clever, or perhaps he is just too clever, and that there was too much trickery and playing with his own agenda to the exclusion of the reader. I didn't feel that the book was for any audience other than David Foster Wallace. I also found the characterisation a bit weird. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on names: Rick Vigorous, Mindy Metalman, but without any substance behind it so, again, I was left thinking 'eh'? And perhaps that sums it up a bit for me, there were a lot of words and not much substance and in the end I just didn't care about what was happening or any of the characters.

It wasn't a bad book, usually I'd give up with something that really didn't intrigue me and I persevered and finished it though it did feel laborious, but in the end I was thinking 'what was the point?' And I still don't really know. I guess I just didn't get it.

[Heteronym]

Eugenio de Andrade...

And, as shocking as this may be, you'll have better luck finding him in English than here in Portugal, where he's out of print. Amazing what a few years being dead can do to one of our greatest poets. So seize the opportunity to read him.

I'm sorry to admit I'm not up to date with contemporary Anglo-American literature, but I'll leave some African recommendations here:

Pepetela: Angolan writer born in 1941. Hardly available in English, but Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent (an obvious pun on James Bond), and The Return of the Water Spirit are available.

Ondjaki: Angolan writer born in 1977. His first novel, Good Morning Comrades is a beautiful portrait of what it was like to grow up in Angola after the independence.

José Eduardo Agualusa: Angolan writer born in 1960. Since winning the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007, he's becoming more and more popular in English-speaking countries. He's got available The Book of Chameleons, Creole, Rainy Season, My Father's Wives.

Mia Couto: Mozambican writer born in 1955. Magical realist who shows the history of his country through fantasy, magic and the absurd. Widely available in English: Every Man is a Race, A River Called Time, Under the Frangipani, The Last Flight of the Flamingo, Sleepwalking Land, Voices Made Night...

Paulina Chiziane: Mozambican writer born in 1955. Angola's first female novelist, this year one of her novels has finally been translated into English, Niketche: A Tale of Poligamy.

[Brad Coelho]

Why the shock?

I'd recommend his collections Kid, Book of Matches or Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corderoy Kid. Kid is a good place to start as, I think, it was his first collection.


Hmm. There were elements about BOTS that I found funny, but in the main I just got the impression that he was trying to be too clever, or perhaps he is just too clever, and that there was too much trickery and playing with his own agenda to the exclusion of the reader. I didn't feel that the book was for any audience other than David Foster Wallace. I also found the characterisation a bit weird. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on names: Rick Vigorous, Mindy Metalman, but without any substance behind it so, again, I was left thinking 'eh'? And perhaps that sums it up a bit for me, there were a lot of words and not much substance and in the end I just didn't care about what was happening or any of the characters.

It wasn't a bad book, usually I'd give up with something that really didn't intrigue me and I persevered and finished it though it did feel laborious, but in the end I was thinking 'what was the point?' And I still don't really know. I guess I just didn't get it.

*Spoiler Alert

it appears you did get it- the existential conceit was just that, ending on a 'i'm a man of my word' note. It was an exercise in 'what if we were just 98.6's, what if we were just words on paper, what, in fact, are we?' The Grandmother's room always had to be 98.6 degrees...her disappearance is tied back into the question of existence. Then there's the exaggerated 'operation total yang' notion that one could consume everything around themselves to become...well, everything in the effort to fill his void of nothing.

I thought the book was hilarious, but certainly an exercise in verbal calisthenics. The names are a nod to Thomas Pynchon; which makes me wonder if there is any cross-over from DFW fans to Pynchon fans? Though Pynchon certainly molded a lot of what DFW did, he's still a very different writer.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

edit-
Doo Doo Doo nothin' to see here

[Dodo25]

Daniel Kehlmann, a young German writer. His most famous books are 'Measuring the World' and 'Ruhm' (translation would be 'fame', yet I'm not sure whether it has been translated, it's pretty new), the latter consists of connected short stories.

[MadcapLaugher]

*Spoiler Alert

I thought the book was hilarious, but certainly an exercise in verbal calisthenics. The names are a nod to Thomas Pynchon; which makes me wonder if there is any cross-over from DFW fans to Pynchon fans? Though Pynchon certainly molded a lot of what DFW did, he's still a very different writer.

I'm both a huge Wallace and Pynchon fan. When you read them though you have to change your expectations of what you get out of the novel. Most Pynchon and Wallace novels don't follow the typical curve of a story. The prose rarely presents a conclusions of the events depicted.

With these two authors their works are mainly, if not all, subject to interpretation. Which I think shows their aim with fiction: to make the reader feel something and to personally connect with them. Wallace himself once said that the goal of literature was to make the reader feel less alone, connected to something.

[Rores28]

I'm both a huge Wallace and Pynchon fan. When you read them though you have to change your expectations of what you get out of the novel. Most Pynchon and Wallace novels don't follow the typical curve of a story. The prose rarely presents a conclusions of the events depicted.

With these two authors their works are mainly, if not all, subject to interpretation. Which I think shows their aim with fiction: to make the reader feel something and to personally connect with them. Wallace himself once said that the goal of literature was to make the reader feel less alone, connected to something.

That seems kinda ironic. I feel like a large majority of his short fiction is steeped with the fear of not being able to truly connect. So I guess he wants us to be able to connect through an intense fear of being unable to.

[The Comedian]

One of my favorite writers is Barry Lopez, who does mostly non-fiction, but his books -- Arctic Dreams, Of Wolves and Men. . . . -- exemplify gifted story telling and literary craftsmanship.

[King Mob]

I didn't know anything about David Foster Wallace, and while searching the internet I cam across this site: http://www.thenewcanon.com. Although many of the works listed are contemporary novels by already established authors with long careers.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

That seems kinda ironic. I feel like a large majority of his short fiction is steeped with the fear of not being able to truly connect. So I guess he wants us to be able to connect through an intense fear of being unable to.

Just the realization that we're not alone in that regard. Knowing that everyone else it going through the same thing regardless of how well they mask it is edifying. It's kind of like how nihilism can assuage because none of the bad **** matters anyway. It can have the reverse effect, too.

On the other hand:
Just off the top of my head, I can recall a few instances where his writing isn't saying that you can't connect, but that a true aspiration to have this sort of real, naked connection will only lead to rejection because it's deviant. In BOTS specifically I'm thinking of a character who pours his heart 24/7 and in return gets spurned in a jokey, ironic way, which if you've read E Unibus Pluram you'll recognize.

And now I'll give you a quote:
"Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.” Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself."

In other words, we've willfully shut ourselves in.

[Rores28]

On the other hand:
Just off the top of my head, I can recall a few instances where his writing isn't not saying that you can't connect, but that a true aspiration to have this sort of real, naked connection will only lead to rejection because it's deviant. In BOTS specifically I'm thinking of a character who pours his heart 24/7 and in return gets spurned in a jokey, ironic way, which if you've read E Unibus Pluram you'll recognize.



Octet too I think is a prime example... and there are several other places in Brief Interviews that I have trouble now remembering what exact story they came from...